It May Take 5 Months To Vaccinate Elderly, California Says: California recently said people 65 and older were eligible to get coronavirus vaccines. But getting two shots into everyone in that age group could take another four to five months, state health officials said Wednesday. Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Batch Of Vaccines Deemed Safe For Use After Allergic Reactions: California is releasing hundreds of thousands of doses of coronavirus vaccine that it had put on pause Sunday after the vaccine batch was linked to a cluster of allergic reactions in San Diego last week. Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times and NBC Bay Area.
In related news —
Woman will get Moderna COVID-19 vaccine second dose despite allergic reaction to first
Below, check out the roundup of California Healthline’s coverage. For today's national health news, read KHN's Morning Briefing.
More News From Across The State
San Francisco Chronicle:
‘We Were All Waiting For This Day’: Bay Area Doctors Hail Biden’s Plan For Rapid Action On Pandemic
The top priority is manufacturing and distributing more vaccines and getting them into arms. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist at UCSF, said that if she were Biden, the first call she would make as president would be to the CEO of pharmaceutical company Pfizer to find out how many vaccines there are — and how many more the country can get. “We can only get out of this fundamentally by vaccines,” Gandhi said. “We have proven that it’s too endemic, we cannot test and isolate ourselves out of this. That ship has sailed.” (Moench, 1/20)
Stat:
Biden, In Inaugural Address, Pledges The U.S. ‘Can Overcome’ Covid-19
President Biden on Wednesday pledged that the United States “can overcome” the Covid-19 pandemic, even as he warned that it is entering “what may be the toughest and deadliest period” of the crisis. The remarks, made during key moments in his inauguration address on the west front of the Capitol, represented a forceful pledge that the country can bring the pandemic to an end. (Facher, 1/20)
CBS News:
Biden Signs Executive Actions On COVID, Climate Change, Immigration And More
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden signed more than a dozen executive actions, some of which reverse decisions made by his predecessor, former President Donald Trump. Several executive actions will make changes to the U.S. response to COVID-19 and try to ease some of the financial strain on Americans resulting from the pandemic. Other executive actions directly target and undo Mr. Trump's actions on the environment, immigration, the U.S. census, and regulatory changes. (Erickson, 1/21)
Reuters:
Biden Will Order Masks On Planes And Trains, Increase Disaster Funds To Fight Coronavirus
One order will require mask-wearing in airports and on certain modes of public transportation, including many trains, airplanes and intercity buses, officials said. He also plans to sign orders on Thursday to establish a COVID-19 testing board to ramp up testing, address supply shortfalls, establish protocols for international travelers and direct resources for minority communities hit hard by the infectious disease. (Bose and Mason, 1/20)
AP:
Biden Puts Forth Virus Strategy, Requires Mask Use To Travel
As the U.S. enters “what may well be the toughest and deadliest period of the virus,” President Joe Biden is putting forth a national COVID-19 strategy to ramp up vaccinations and testing, reopen schools and businesses and increase the use of masks — including a requirement that they be worn for travel. Biden also will address inequities in hard-hit minority communities as he signs 10 pandemic-related executive orders on Thursday, his second day in office. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 1/21)
The Washington Post:
Biden's First Executive Orders Will Reverse Trump Policies
The most pressing of his priorities are measures to combat the deadly coronavirus pandemic. Biden signed executive actions to require masks on all federal grounds and asked agencies to extend moratoriums on evictions and on federal student loan payments. He urged Americans to don face coverings for 100 days, while reviving a global health unit in the National Security Council — allowed to go dormant during the Trump administration — to oversee pandemic preparedness and response. Biden also began to reverse several steps taken by President Donald Trump by embracing the World Health Organization, revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline and rejoining the Paris climate agreement. (Min Kim, 1/20)
The Wall Street Journal:
Biden Extends Student Loan Payments Pause, Moratorium On Evictions
On his first day in office, President Biden signed a range of executive actions including two that will affect the financial lives of millions of Americans. One directs the Education Department to extend the pause on federal student loan payments, and the other directs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to extend the federal eviction moratorium. Both measures were put in place last year in response to economic hardships caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. (Lam, 1/20)
The New York Times:
Biden Restores Ties With The World Health Organization That Were Cut By Trump
Seeking to unify the global response to the coronavirus, President Biden on his first day in office retracted a decision by the Trump administration to withdraw from the World Health Organization. The Biden administration announced that Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, would be the head of the U.S. delegation to the agency’s executive board. Dr. Fauci will begin that role with a meeting this week. (Morales, 1/20)
CNBC:
Biden To Sign 10 Executive Orders To Combat Covid Pandemic; Invoke Defense Production Act
Biden will also use his executive powers to direct agencies to use the Defense Production Act to compel companies to prioritize manufacturing supplies that are necessary to the pandemic response. That could include protective equipment like masks, supplies needed to administer vaccines and testing supplies, the plan says. The Trump administration also invoked the DPA to make ventilators and other supplies on several instances as part of its response to the pandemic. The executive order, called “A Sustainable Public Health Supply Chain,” will also “direct the development of a new Pandemic Supply Chain Resilience Strategy” in an effort to bolster domestic manufacturing of critical supplies. (Feuer, 1/21)
AP:
New CDC Director Takes Over Beleaguered Agency Amid Crisis
The task falls to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, 51, an infectious-diseases specialist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, who was sworn in Wednesday. She takes the helm at a time when the virus’s U.S. death toll has eclipsed 400,000 and continues to accelerate. While the agency has retained some of its top scientific talent, public health experts say, it has a long list of needs, including new protection from political influence, a comprehensive review of its missteps during the pandemic and more money to beef up basic functions like disease tracking and genetic analysis. (Stobbe, 1/21)
Modern Healthcare:
Elizabeth Richter Will Serve As Acting CMS Administrator
Elizabeth Richter will serve as acting administrator for CMS, according to the agency's website on Wednesday. The career civil servant previously served as CMS' deputy center director, leading policy development and operations management for Medicare's fee-for-service program since 2007. She has held several roles focused on Medicare payment issues since she joined the agency in 1990. Healthcare insiders have waited with bated breath for Biden to announce his pick for CMS administrator. But he hasn't done it yet, even though the agency's Medicare and Medicaid programs cover nearly 1 in 3 Americans. CMS' budget is more than $1 trillion, accounting for over a quarter of federal spending. (Brady and Kim Cohen, 1/20)
Politico:
Biden Leaves Top FDA Job Open Amid Vaccine Push
President Joe Biden assumes office with an arsenal of health care veterans leading his coronavirus response — but his team’s handwringing has left an agency central to the pandemic fight without a permanent leader. Public health experts and Biden’s own advisers have called for a strong chief at the Food and Drug Administration to help insulate the agency from public pressure and aid the new president in his goal of vaccinating 100 million people during his first days in office. But the debate on who should get the FDA’s top job has dragged on for months, with Biden's team unable to settle on a nominee. (Owermohle, Cancryn and Kenen, 1/20)
Stat:
The 10 Biden Officials To Watch On The Covid-19 Response
President Biden has promised to listen to the experts on Covid-19, but their messages may be hard to hear if too many are talking at once. Already, Biden has tasked dozens of scientists, administrators, and policymakers with reining in a raging pandemic. As the Biden transition segues from planning to governing, those individuals will have to coalesce into a cohesive unit for them to enjoy the success the new president has promised. (Cohrs, 1/21)
The Hill:
Amazon Offers To Help Biden With Vaccine Distribution
Amazon sent a letter to President Biden in his first hours of office Wednesday offering to assist the new administration with its coronavirus vaccine distribution. Dave Clark, Amazon's CEO of consumer business, said the company is willing to help by leveraging Amazon’s “operations, information technology, and communications capabilities” to assist Biden with his goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans within his first 100 days in the White House. (Klar, 1/20)
Los Angeles Times:
Newsom's COVID-19 1-Million Vaccine Promise Exposes Data Issues
Gov. Gavin Newsom urged Californians to “hold me accountable” to a goal of administering 1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine in 10 days, but nearly two weeks later a series of data collection problems have left state officials unable to offer clear evidence of success or failure. A spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health said Wednesday that it’s likely Newsom reached the 1 million mark over 12 days, not 10 days as promised, but noted that coding errors and data lags have hampered the state’s efforts to accurately count and publicly report how many doses are administered each day. (Gutierrez, 1/21)
San Francisco Chronicle:
San Francisco Wants To Vaccinate All Eligible Residents By The End Of June. There’s Still A Long Way To Go
San Francisco officials said Wednesday that they hope all eligible residents will be vaccinated by June 30, but meeting that goal will require a massive increase in daily vaccination numbers and a huge jump in available supply. “The chief obstacle is there’s not enough doses,” Roland Pickens, CEO of the San Francisco Health Network, which is the public health care system for the city, said at a Wednesday Board of Supervisors hearing. “We acknowledge that the process has been slow and frustrating for all of us.” As of Monday, only 3.4% of San Francisco’s population had received one dose of the vaccine. That equates to 29,599 people, most of whom are health care workers. Meanwhile, only 0.7% of the population — or, 6,483 people — have received a second dose. (Thadani, 1/20)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
Some San Diegans Eligible For A COVID-19 Vaccine Are Struggling To Schedule Appointments
Knowing it’s your turn to get vaccinated is one challenge. Making an appointment to get the shot is yet another, according to several San Diegans. Elizabeth Kostas is one of them. Kostas, a dental hygienist living in Carmel Valley, says it took her 10 tries to schedule an appointment at a mass COVID-19 vaccination site near Petco Park. Each time she saw an open slot, she raced to fill in her information — only to be told that there were no longer available spots, forcing her to start again. (Wosen, Pearlman and Brennan, 1/20)
LA Daily News:
Seniors Snap Up Vaccine Appointments In LA County As Website, Hotline Are Jammed
Scores of Los Angeles County residents 65 and older scrambled to secure much-coveted appointments on Wednesday, Jan. 20, for coronavirus vaccinations after county officials declared them eligible on Tuesday. The county’s vaccinatelacounty.com website posted a notice Wednesday alerting people that remaining appointments at county vaccination sites were “extremely limited.” And the county’s vaccine hotline, 833-540-0473, warned of long wait times and technical issues. (Rosenfeld, 1/20)
Fresno Bee:
Fresno, Valley Have The Worst COVID-19 Vaccination Rates In California. What’s Going On?
About 1.4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been injected into the arms of Californians since drug companies received emergency approval from federal regulators last month. That’s about 35 vaccinations for every 1,000 residents of the state as of Sunday. Yet in Fresno and the rest of the central and southern San Joaquin Valley, the pace of vaccinations is less than half the statewide average – just over 17 people vaccinated per 1,000 residents, according to data from the California Department of Public Health. (Sheehan, 1/20)
Modesto Bee:
Stanislaus County To Restart COVID-19 Vaccination Clinics
The clinics are for county residents or eligible people who work in Stanislaus County. Seniors 65 and older are asked to bring an ID or other proof of residence. The county received some additional vaccine this week that allows the clinics to open Thursday. Additional dates beyond that will depend on vaccine supply. The clinics in Modesto and Turlock each can administer 2,000 doses of vaccine per day. But a limited supply will limit the clinics Thursday to 1,000 doses at each site, according to a county Health Services Agency news release. The clinics will remain open until they run out of doses. Last week, more than 1,600 doses were administered each day at two vaccination events held at 830 Scenic Drive in Modesto. (Carlson, 1/20)
Politico:
‘Come With Me If You Want To Live’: Schwarzenegger Gets Vaccinated
Actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger received his first dose of the coronavirus vaccine at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday, making him among the first residents 65 and older to get the shot in Los Angeles County. Schwarzenegger, 73, booked an appointment himself at one of the city’s large-scale vaccination sites Tuesday after county health officials announced that individuals 65 and older could begin receiving vaccines Thursday, according to his spokesperson Daniel Ketchell. (Nieves, 1/20)
LA Daily News:
Can Employers Mandate The COVID-19 Vaccine?
Want to keep your job in 2021? That may depend on whether you’re willing to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Employment attorneys Peter Brown and Alex Volberding of the Los Angeles-based law firm Liebert Cassidy Whitmore say an employer can legally mandate the vaccine under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But there are exceptions. (Smith, 1/20)
Bay Area News Group:
Record COVID-19 Deaths In California As Other Metrics Improve
While California’s active hospitalizations from COVID-19 fell to their lowest point since the calendar turned to 2021, the state on Tuesday recorded its most deaths and its fourth-most new cases on any single day of the pandemic, as many counties caught up on reporting from the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. The large tallies on Tuesday had little effect on the daily averages over the past week, which remained lower than their respective peaks but still substantially higher than any time prior to December. (Webeck, 1/20)
Los Angeles Times:
'The End Is Not Yet In Sight': Coronavirus Danger Remains Even As Some Metrics Improve, L.A. County Says
Despite some promising signs that the worst wave of the COVID-19 pandemic may finally be receding, a top Los Angeles County health official warned Wednesday that the situation remains precarious, with thousands more people becoming infected every day and an unsustainable number of patients requiring hospital treatment. “The end is not yet in sight,” county Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said. Though the county has recently seen welcome downticks in the number of coronavirus-positive patients in its hospitals, as well as the daily infection rate, Ferrer emphasized that “COVID-19 is still rampant at our workplaces, in our neighborhoods and, really, across every corner of this county.” (Money and Lin II, 1/20)
San Diego Union-Tribune:
San Diego Scientists Hustle To Find Out If 'California' Strain Of Coronavirus Poses Big Threat
San Diego scientists are hustling to help find out whether a new strain of the novel coronavirus that’s spreading in California is more infectious than the original virus and likely to cause more sickness and fatalities. The strain, tentatively named the California variant, or CAL.20C — was discovered last summer. But scientists say it didn’t begin to spread widely across the state until late last year and that it recently began showing up in San Diego County, where various strains of the virus have killed more than 2,100 people. (Robbins, 1/20)
Los Angeles Times:
Patients Struggle To Get Highly Touted COVID-19 Treatments
By the time he tested positive for a coronavirus infection, Gary Herritz was feeling pretty sick. His scratchy throat had progressed to a dry cough, headache, joint pain and fever. A liver transplant recipient, he knew his compromised immune system made him vulnerable to a severe case of COVID-19. Herritz had read on Twitter about monoclonal antibody therapy, the type of treatment famously touted by Donald Trump after his release from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The Food and Drug Administration authorized its emergency use to keep high-risk COVID-19 patients out of the hospital — and, perhaps, the morgue. (Aleccia, 1/21)
Los Angeles Times:
Bay Area Restaurants, Wineries Sue Newsom Over Dining Ban
A group of more than 50 wineries and restaurants across Napa and Sonoma counties are suing to overturn a state ban on in-person dining, saying their constitutional rights are being trampled as they slip into financial ruin. It’s the latest litigation brought over the restrictions that have blanketed much of the state since early December, when coronavirus cases began skyrocketing. (Seidman, 1/21)
SF Gate:
Did Shutting Down Outdoor Dining Contribute To California's COVID-19 Surge?
There has been no such linkage between outdoor dining and COVID-19 transmission, but California banned the activity in most of the state in early December, despite being one of the few states with a winter climate that would support it. Despite the ban, California has had one of the worst winter COVID-19 surges in the country, which begs the following question: Is it possible that shutting down outdoor dining made the state's surge even worse? (Ting, 1/20)
Los Angeles Times:
L.A. Health Official Calls For A Longer Production Pause
Los Angeles’ top health department official urged the film and TV industry to pause production until the end of the month. While most studios had put many shows on an extended hiatus until this week, L.A. County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer has asked for the pause to continue until the end of the month. “We’re going to ask that everyone continue to do their very best, halt those activities that aren’t absolutely essential until we get to the end January and we can be certain that we’re starting to actually see significant reduction in transmission,” Ferrer said in a news conference Wednesday. (Sakoui, 1/20)
Bay Area News Group:
Berkeley Moves Forward With Pandemic Hazard Pay For Grocery Store Workers
The city of Berkeley will move forward with an emergency ordinance that would give grocery store workers in Berkeley an extra $5 per hour during the pandemic. Authored by newly-elected council member Terry Taplin, the emergency ordinance would guarantee grocery store workers hazard pay, effective from when its adopted until the city returns to the yellow tier or 120 days later. (Ruggiero, 1/19)
LA Daily News:
Olympia Medical Center May Yet Stay Open To Help Cope With Pandemic, City Official Says
The new owner of Olympia Medical Center in Mid-Wilshire — which announced suddenly on New Year’s Eve that it would close its doors in March, setting off alarms in the pandemic-plagued community — would allow the previous owner to keep the hospital open amid the coronavirus surge, at least through the end of the year. (Grigoryants, 1/20)
The Bakersfield Californian:
Hospitals Still Under Strain From COVID-19, But Some See Hope The Virus Has Peaked
New daily cases of COVID-19 in Kern County have dipped and so have hospitalizations for those with the virus, but hospitals are still being clobbered by record-high patient levels. Kern Medical is seeing its highest-ever patient census, holding about 180 patients on Wednesday, which is about 20 patients above the typical number the hospital sees, according to CEO Russell Judd. About 40 of those patients were positive for COVID-19, and having filled all its ICU beds, five ICU-level patients were being treated in another unit of the hospital, Judd said. (Shepard, 1/20)
Bay Area News Group:
East Bay Hospice Care Uses Robotic Animals To Comfort Lonely Patients
To help ward off some of the isolation and loneliness elderly dementia patients in hospice care have been experiencing during the pandemic, workers at one organization have come up with a creative idea: robotic animals to bring them comfort. (Ruggiero, 1/20)